Academic researchers rallied outside the Estes Kefauver Federal Building in downtown Nashville on Tuesday during the United Auto Workers’ “Kill the Cuts” national day of action. Speakers criticized recent funding cuts from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the National Institutes of Health, that have imperiled American universities’ world-class research programs.
Humanities Tennessee's National Endowment for the Humanities grant, worth about $1.2 million annually, has been terminated
About 70 university employees, graduate students and supporters crowded onto the sidewalk between federal offices and Broadway. The action was convened by Vanderbilt graduate students, who recently ended a push for formal union recognition when President Donald Trump was elected to a second term.
Abrupt orders from the federal government have frozen or cut grant money since Trump took office. The federal government has historically been the primary supporter of research at universities, particularly related to health care and medicine. Decisions by Trump threaten to topple America’s role as home to the world’s premier scientific research.
“Money is getting tighter, and we can't do experiments we wanted to do," says Jade Miller, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University’s Department of Pharmacology. “ A lot of us are considering moving to a different country where there are more research opportunities because there will be too much competition for too few positions. It's a problem not only for people who work at academic institutions, but for the U.S. population and for the world. No matter your political affiliation, no matter your current economic or social status, science has benefited you in some way. Whether it's insulin, the chemotherapy you went to the hospital for, the food you eat — that is because of science.”
Here’s how we could see an impact on the state and local levels
Vanderbilt University Medical Center instituted a hiring freeze in late March and has begun cutting $250 million from its budget. Researchers in training expect slim prospects on the American job market and see the Trump administration’s funding cuts as an existential threat to science in the United States.
“ Faculty are struggling in ways that we've never seen before,” says Megan Stone, a Ph.D. student at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute studying the retina. “People are afraid of losing their jobs. Funding has always been an issue, but these cuts are just so poorly thought-out. A competent government could have implemented something like this over several years. Now it feels there's this dark cloud and a lack of hope over us right now.”
